Friday, October 30, 2015

Immediately after the defeat at
the General election in 2015, Ed Milliband resigned. What if he had decided to
stay on? We do not know.What we do
know is what happened in Scotland.Jim Murphy was elected Leader in October
2014.

Following his defeat and Labour’s rout in Scotland, Murphy said he would remain
Leader of Scottish Labour. First to call for Murphy to resign from being leader
was unseated MP, Ian Davidson, who said, "Morally, as the man who has led
us to the biggest ever disaster that Labour has suffered in Scotland, he can’t
continue." Then Pat Rafferty ofUnitecalled for Murphy's resignation, followed by Kevin
Lindsay ofASLEF.Then Neil Findlay MSP resigned from Murphy's shadow
cabinet, citing the election results, followed by MSPAlex Rowley.

The decision of whether he should continue was made by the Scottish Labour
Party Executive. Jim Murphy narrowly survived avote
of no confidenceby 17 votes
to 14. Three of the 17 votes in support of Murphy included that of Murphy
himself, that ofIan Murray MP, Shadow
Secretary of State for Scotland and Labour's only MP in Scotland, and that of a
LabourPeer. Murphy then announced on 16 May 2015 that he intended
to step down as Leader of the Scottish Labour Party in June.

In 2010 Gordon Brown did not resign until he had failed to negotiate a
coalition deal with the Liberal Democrats. Gordon Brown announced on 10 May
2010 that he would stand down as Labour Leader 4 days after the election defeat
that left a hung parliament. Am I the only one who thinks a new acting
leader would have had a greater chance of successfully negotiating a Labour led
coalition? Gordon Brown could have gone to the National Executive and he would
almost certainly have been successful in continuing as Leader.

I believe that there is a moral obligation on anyone who leads a party to
electoral defeat to resign immediately. If you have been rejected by the
electorate then I believe you have lost the authority to lead the party. At a
more local level, the vast majority of the Labour Group in Swansea wanted to
remove the Leader of the Labour Group who was also Council leader. To remove
the Labour group leader, they needed to get a written request for a leadership
election signed by two third of the group.This was a lengthy process. Whilst the
removal of a Leader is not and should not be something undertaken lightly,
making it incredibly difficult also does not help.

The mechanism of electing the
leader of the Labour party at Westminster, Scotland and, I believe, Wales by
one member one vote is highly democratic. The party members choose the leader
of their party, as almost 60% of those that voted, voted to elect Jeremy
Corbyn.

Two things I learnt from this election. Firstly,
allowing MPs to be the gatekeepers of who gets onto the ballot paper came very
close to keeping Jeremy off the ballot paper. Someone who was overwhelmingly
elected by the members nearly did not make the ballot paper. Why cannot members
either self nominate or have a proposer and seconder? Whilst, with the first
system, all MPs could stand and under the second system in excess of 50, what
it would do is widen the debate and allow everyone a chance. My expectation is
that under that system a few more - perhaps up to six - would have stood.
Surely democracy means you should have the maximum possible choice?

Secondly,
members are enthused by the chance to hear a debate inside the party. When I spoke in favour of Jeremy
at the Swansea meeting I was amazed, as I know others were, at the number
attending and the enthusiasm generated. By the time Cardiff was reached, the
number in attendance was huge. A bus full came up from Swansea and there were
people from all over south Wales present. Party membership in Swansea East is
at its highest during the 40 years I have been involved. There are far more
members that in the run up to the 1997 general election.

I want to now turn to internal party democracy and
discuss West Glamorgan County Council, Swansea Council and the National
Assembly Wales. Two bodies I have been previously been elected to and one I am
currently a member of. In the days of West Glamorgan County Council and the
early days of Swansea Council or decisions were taken collectively by the
Labour Group. Whilst the Leader and committee chairs would have agreed the
report with senior officers and would report to the Labour group, the final
decision was the Labour group as a whole. They could and sometimes did reject
or amend the recommendation. Also, members collectively made recommendations at
sub committee that were then recommended either to full Council or to a
committee of all Councillors. When the cabinet system was introduced, decisions
became delegated to Cabinet members and then on in many cases to Council
officers.

Turning to the Assembly: this works on the system of a Leader directly elected
by the wider party membership but with the Assembly members acting as the
gatekeeper on who can stand. At the last election, won by Carwyn Jones, a
Labour group of 26 members and a candidate needed to be nominated by six
members meaning that the maximum number of candidates was four, three actually
stood.Do we need Assembly members to act as gatekeeper? Why cannot a system
that provides greater choice be brought in?Whilst we may not have a leadership
election for sometime, a system is needed to be in place that makes it easier
to get on the ballot paper in Wales, as much as it is needed at Westminster.The
First Minister has immense power, brought about by being the Leader of the
ruling group and directly elected by the membership.The Leader has absolute
control.They choose the Cabinet.They can appoint to the cabinet who
they want.They can remove any
cabinet member at any time via a reshuffle.

As you will have seen, there are other posts that are in the gift of the First
Minister such as chair of the European monitoring committee.How did I find out that Jenny Rathbone
had been removed? David Deans, theWestern
Mailjournalist, told me.
Whilst I am pleased Mick Antoniw has been appointed to the post, how did I find
out about the appointment? No, it was not theWestern
Mail...it was the BBC. I still have not been told about either event
officially. There is no reason for the First Minister to tell me. He is not
accountable to me as a member of the Labour Group. He is not accountable to the
Labour group collectively or individually. His only accountability is to the
Welsh Executive.We need to achieve two things: firstly, to make it easier for
candidates to get on the ballot paper. Secondly to have greater accountability.
This is a debate we need now when there is no leadership election imminent,
rather than wait until we have a vacancy.

This is the text of Mike's contribution to a roundtable discussion at the Welsh
Labour Grassroots AGM in Cardiff on 17 October 2015.

Monday, September 28, 2015

In 1992, the
Conservatives won their fourth consecutive general election, despite Labour having
expectations that they would win. Immediately after the
defeat, Neil Kinnock and Roy Hattersley resigned, to be replaced by John Smith
and Margaret Beckett.Pundits were predicting that Labour could never win and
that we would have a Conservative government for ever; then came Black
Wednesday on September 16, 1992, which was a humiliation for the Conservative
Government under John Major. It would never recover from the blow to its
credibility, nor regain the trust of those voters it had shocked and alienated by
putting up interest rates so high, even if only temporarily.Economically, for the country, it was a release. Britain
was in control of its monetary policy once more; the pound was devalued,
helping to pull the economy out of recession and heralding a period of growth
that lasted until the banking crisis of 2008.A Gallup poll on the 7th September 1992, the
week before John Smith became leader, showed a Conservative lead of 2% but by 28th
September, after Black Wednesday, it had changed into a Labour lead of 7%. When
John Smith died in May 1994, the Labour lead was consistently over 20% in the
opinion polls, compared to the 12.5% it achieved under Tony Blair at the 1997 general
election.

The
Conservatives lost economic credibility on Black Wednesday and defeat at the general election became inevitable for them, whoever the Labour leader was. However,
if Black Wednesday was not enough, we also hada series of scandals; party disunity over the Europrean Union; and the desire of the electorate for change after 18 years of Tory rule.

Year

Labour
vote

No
of seats

%
vote

Change
in %vote

Turnout

Change
in turnout

1997

13,518,167

413

43.4%

9%

71.3%

-6.4%

2001

10,724,953

403

40.7%

-2.7

59.4%

-11.9%

2005

9,552,436

355

35.2%

-5.5%

61.4%

2%

2010

8,606,517

258

29.0%

-6.2%

65.1%

3.7%

2015

9,347,304

232

30.4%

1.4

66.1

1.0%

As the table
above shows, following the Labour landslide of 1997, there has been a continual
loss of seats and - until 2010 - votes at every election. Turnout collapsed at the
2001 election and, despite making postal votes available on demand, turnout still
is substantially under the 1997 figure.

From May
1994 until 2010, Labour was led by the two architects of New Labour: Tony Blair
and Gordon Brown. During that time, 158 seats were lost; 14.4% or approximately
1/3 of the 1997 vote was also lost; and turnout fell by approximately 6%.

In summary:
New Labour inherited a winning position and has overseen the continual
reduction of the number of seats at each election since 1997. I believe a
better way to describe what happened - as opposed to the New Labour spin - is:

the Tories lost
the confidence of the electorate due to Black Wednesday;

Labour won a
landslide but failed to fulfil the aspirations of its voters, many of whom
became disillusioned - either staying home or voting for third parties in
subsequent elections;

Labour lost economic credibility following the
banking crisis in 2008 and thus lost in 2010;

Tony Blair
was in the right place at the right time. Napoleon
Bonaparte said, "Give me lucky generals"; so, with politics: "Give me a lucky leader."

Saturday, September 5, 2015

As
Red Labour have observed, why elect Jeremy Corbyn as leader and then allow the
NPF to be taken over by the right. However, there is a distinct possibility of
Labour doing no better, or even worse than two years ago when right wing slates
generally triumphed in these elections. Then it was only Wales and the
Yorkshire region that achieved a majority of the four seats, with two in
Eastern, one in three others and none in five. This year we have only managed
to put up a full slate in six of the eleven regions, and in two of the five
others have conceded the youth election to Labour First by not putting up
candidates. Clearly the focus on the Corbyn campaign has been at the expense of
this election.

This
poses the wider question of how the left is organised in the Labour Party, and
despite the above it is true that the left did well in the NEC elections last
year, partly due to the failure of the right to agree a common slate.

There
are left organisations, some of which are organised locally, publications,
blogs and an e-mail network, and this has
obviously all contributed to the rise of Jeremy Corbyn, although the extent to
which that is so is difficult to establish.

The
main, indeed the only general left organisation for the UK is the Labour
Representation Committee (LRC), particularly since Compass ceased to have a
Labour orientation. It has a monthly publication, Labour Briefing, no longer
independent since 2012 after a bitter row with the Campaign for Labour Party
Democracy (CLPD),which specialises in constitutional change and is always very active
at conference, but is a significant tendency in its own right. CLPD does not
organise locally, but LRC does, with 17 local branches in England, leaving
Scotland and Wales to the Campaign for Socialism and Welsh Labour Grassroots respectively,
neither of which organise locally to my knowledge.

The
only other organisation on the left of any size is Red Labour, which has
seemingly come from nowhere in the last two years, although it exists only on
Facebook and does not seem to have a centre or a conference. Nevertheless, it
boasts 46 branches, some of which are quite active, others dormant or little
more than a facebook address.

Other
publications include Tribune, Chartist, and Renewal. The leading blog is Left
Futures, but others are worthwhile including Socialist Unity and Socialist
Economic Bulletin.

Other
than that there are some local groupings that are not tied to any of the main
groups and a range of informal groupings and networks in CLPs, Labour groups
and trade unions.

Whatever
happens on September 12th, the left is now a more significant force than
it was four months ago and a new organisation that is able to unite it and
carry it forward is urgently needed.

Monday, August 24, 2015

Since being
elected in 2011, most of the discussions I have heard in the Senedd have been
around reducing taxes in order to grow the Welsh economy, rather than the need
for taxation to pay for public services. When you look at the cost of private
education and private health care, it puts into perspective the value for money
we get from our taxation system.

Taxation
exists to pay for public services. Too many people believe that we can have the
same quality of public services as Scandinavia but have a taxation system which
is more like that of the USA. It is not by random chance that those countries with the
highest tax levels have the best public services and those with lowest tax
levels the poorest. It is because taxation is necessary to raise the money to
pay for the public services we all need.

Quality
public services - be they health, education or infrastructure - come at a
substantial cost to the public purse and the only way of paying for them is via
taxation. Taxation can be on income, profit, consumption/ expenditure or value
of land and property - or a combination of all of them. But if people want quality
public services, these are the taxes needed to pay for them.

Whilst nobody likes to pay taxes, and some rich individuals and multi-national companies are expert at reducing their tax payments, providing
quality public services means that, if some people do not pay then either
public services suffer or others have to make up the shortfall. Every time tax
cuts are made, they are shown as beneficial and they appear to be to those who
are paying less tax and have more money in their pocket. The effect that these reductions in government income have on public expenditure on
services such as health, local government and education are completely ignored
until the cuts start affecting people.

The more difficult a tax is to avoid, the more unpopular it is with
the rich and powerful. By far the most difficult taxes to avoid are the
property taxes (non-domestic rates and council tax). There are no tricks, such
as using internal company transactions or having non-domiciled status, to avoid
paying the tax. The buildings - whether they are residential, manufacturing, commercial
or retail - are not movable and the tax becomes liable on the property and has to
be paid.

If we desire quality public services then we have to
pay for them, via taxation. This is not the start of a campaign for higher taxes but it is
linking taxation with expenditure. Remember the old adage: you only get what you
pay for.

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

It
is, unfortunately, not a caricature to say that much comment on the recent
election has consisted of vigorous assertion by the Labour Party right that the
programme was too left wing, countered equally vigorously by the left that it
was not left wing enough! Supporting evidence has been scanty, beyond the cry
of ‘1983’ from the right, countered by ‘1945’ from the left.

The
leadership campaign has, if anything, made this situation worse, with fear of a
Corbyn win having elicited some desperate responses from the right, and from
the other candidates,and, while Corbyn
himself, to his very great credit, has stuck to an elaboration of policy, many
of his supporters on the blogosphere have sunk to the level of their opponents.

It
is surely only by a rational analysis, rather than blind assertion, that Labour
can again successfully promote itself in 2020 or before, and this article looks at some of the more
considered evidence and opinion about the recent election than that referred to
above. Much of this has not received the attention it should have done,
although there will hopefully be a renewed focus on this when the official ‘Learning Lessons’ enquiryis published
next month.

The
most important areas of investigation can, I think, be reasonably grouped under
these main headings:

How
the UK voted, by region, age, gender, class and other relevant distinctions.

How
the new electoral situation has changed Labour’s prospects.

How
potential and actual Labour voters viewed the party’s appeal.

The
impact of UKIP and the Greens.

Why
Scotland moved from Labour to the SNP.

Why
the pollsters got it wrong again.

I
shall cite some of the main findings under these headings and comment briefly
on each.

How
we voted

The biggest single change was Scotland, where Labour’s loss of 40
seats was a huge blow, which will not be easily reversed, and obviously makes it
much more difficult for Labour to gain a majority. It also means that we now
have three different electoral systems – Northern Ireland, which was always
different, and now Scotland, because of its domination by the SNP. The main
system is what remains, in England and Wales. Here there were significant
variations between the main regions, with London and the three Northern regions
experiencing the biggest swing to Labour, with small to negative swings
elsewhere, including, inexplicably, Wales. However, extra Labour votes were
largely at their strongest in seats already held by Labour, and much weaker in
the small towns and suburban areas that Labour needed to take.

The
Lib-Dem vote went to Labour more than any other party (24%), but the Tories
got, crucially, not much less at 20%, and the Greens 11%. Over 65s were twice
as Conservative than Labour, with a much higher turnout, while voters became
progressively more Labour as they became younger, but with a progressively
lower turnout. Women, except the over 65s, were more Labour than men,
particularly the young. There was some reversion to social class alignment, but
the middle class Labour vote largely held, but turnout was much higher among
the more Conservative inclined social groups. The Conservatives lost heavily to
UKIP, as did Labour to a lesser extent, mainly
from the older white male working class. Labour remains strong among BAME
voters, but the Conservatives have increased their share here. Workers in the
private sector are more Conservative, those in the public sector Labour, but
less so. Those with more qualifications tended to Labour, those with fewer to
the Conservatives.

It
is clear that, unless Labour can either increase its turnout among the under 35s
and the D/E social groups, or increase
its support among the over 65s, and preferably both, then winning is going to
be very difficult. Labour must pay urgent attention to these tasks as well as
analysing its failure to capture more than a handful of Conservative seats, and
losing some to them.

The
new electoral situation

Prior to the election, Labour had an in-built
advantage, all of which has not only gone, but the advantage has swung the
other way to the Conservatives, and that is before any boundary changes, which
they will no doubt push through prior to the next election.

There
are three main reasons for this reversal of fortunes. Firstly Scotland, where
Labour’s huge loss of 40 seats contrasted with the Conservative’s nil loss; the
huge decline in the Lib-Dem vote meaning that the opportunity for tactical
voting, either by Labour to keep the Conservatives out or by the Lib-Dems to keep
Labour in has largely disappeared; and the swing to the Conservatives in their
marginal seats meaning that they are less marginal.

Several
commentators have pointed to the huge challenge that Labour faces here, and of
the necessity of winning back votes from the Conservatives if Labour is to win
in 2020. This is strictly not true, as a combination of votes lost to the SNP,
UKIP, the Greens and of new voters and previous non voters could suffice, but
it is unlikely that all of that could happen simultaneously, and there is no
longer a big Lib-Dem vote to be inherited.

How
voters saw Labour

There have been a number of surveys on this, most of which
have highlighted similar concerns. The most important were concern over
Labour’s past and future handling of the economy, immigration, too generous
welfare, control by the SNP and Miliband’s credibility as leader. Anti
aspiration and anti business were lesser factors, as was austerity, about which
there has been an interesting debate.

It
is hardly surprising that Labour is viewed poorly on the economy, as its
biggest mistake was not to defend its record in government prior to 2010 and
allowing the myth that the deficit was Labour’s fault to become widely
believed. Not having put forward a coherent alternative to austerity policies means
there is little support for something that is not policy, which is not the same
as support for austerity. The problem with the ’immigration problem’ is that it
can embrace much, from racist opposition to any non white immigration since the
1940s to justifiable concern with pressure on local services caused by migrant
European workers. Here and on welfare,
myths abound, but Labour’s rather desperate pronouncements on these issues
prior to the election indicate thatmuch
work is needed here.

UKIP
and the Greens

Both, predictably, did very well, despite ending up with only one
MP apiece. The Greens, thanks to the Lib-Dem implosion have probably secured
lasting extra support, now at 4% although clearly at Labour’s expense. In most
of the seats lost to the Conservatives, the Green vote was higher than the
margin of loss.

But
it is UKIP that is now the most significant extra force. The failure to even
win a seat for Farage highlights the injustice of our electoral system and may
well serve to boost pressure for the adoption of some form of PR, and UKIP are
likely to remain strong at least up to the forthcoming referendum. Thereafter
it is, assuming a by no means certain win for remaining in, partly a question
of how the Conservatives position themselves, but it is difficult to see UKIP
sustaining its momentum,although its appeal
now goes well beyond the EU to cover immigration and nostalgia for the whole
gamut of reactionary prejudice. The decline of UKIP would help the
Conservatives most, but Labour as well, although it would make it harder for
Labour to win overall.

Scotland

As indicated above, this now effectively constitutes a separate electoral
system, about which much has been written, which I do not intend to add to,
except to say that without a significant number of Scottish MPs Labour’s task
is much harder. With the SNP having firmly established itself as the dominant
Scottish party there can be no assumption that, in the short run at least, those
seats will be won back.

The
pollsters

They got it wrong again, more badly than at any time since 1992. To
be fair, it was only Labour and Conservative that they got badly out, by three points too many for Labour
and the same too few for the Conservatives, thus enabling a majority government
to narrowly emerge, and experts on a hung parliament to go back to their ivory
towers. Investigation into the reasons for this error are ongoing, with not
much evidence of a late swing over Scotland, nor of ‘Shy’ Conservatives (i.e.
those deliberately lying), but some evidence of turnout by Labour being down
for those indicating their intention to vote.

This
brief summary of what happened on May7th has not touched on the wider and more
important issues that will determine Labour’s future. Can Labour win on the
basis of a populist social democracy now being promoted by Jeremy Corbyn here and
elsewhere in Europe? Or is a reheated Blairism the only way back to power? Is our
unjust electoral system a barrier to change, and is PR the only way forward?
Did Labour lose because of a number of factors which can be changed, or is its
plight part of the crisis of social democracy afflicting similar parties in
Europe.

Such
questions and others will be debated in the coming period, but in order to move
forward we must have a clear idea of what actually happened.

For
those interested in further reading, I list some of the main sources below:

Friday, August 14, 2015

I have
always wondered how the First World War generals could have been so stupid
trying the same tactic time after time. Yet more of what failed in 2010 and
2015 a form of austerity light is considered by some the solution next time. If
it fails in 2020 we can always try it again in 2025.

You win elections when you give the electorate
hope. When they think you are on their side. Labour lost in 1959 and in 2015 because
we were not prepared to differentiate ourselves from the Tories. We are the
party that stands up for the poor, the down trodden and exploited. We are the
party of the ordinary workers and their families not of the casino capitalists
of the city of London.

I want to
debunk two myths. Firstly is that you keep the last election vote and add to
it.

Remember the
last election, the experts, the leadership, the planners had it all worked out.
All we need to do to win is add the disillusioned Liberal Democrat to our 2010
voters and we would win. According to electoral calculus 7 % of the electorate
who voted Lib Dem in 2010 voted Labour in 2015 so we should have won or at
least come a close second.

But 2% of
2010 Labour voters voted SNP, 1% voted UKIP, 2% voted Tory and 1% voted Green. If
we had held on to that vote we would have polled 36.4% of the vote to the
Conservatives 36.9%.

We cannot
take our voters for granted and try and gain some conservative ones by moving to
the right. Some people have said we lost due to lazy Labour voters not voting. It
is my view we lost because too many ex Labour voters could not see how we would
make their lives better. Why voting Labour would make a difference.

The second
myth is that you win elections from the centre ground. If that was true the Lib
Dems would win every election Although the Liberal Democrats most successful
elections have been when they moved to the left.

Was the
Attlee government in 1945 in the centre ground?

Were the
Wilson Governments in the centre ground?

Was Thatcher
in the centre ground?

Is Cameron
in the centre ground?

We in Wales, when led by Rhodri Morgan, set
clear red water between us and the Labour Party in London and we won.

What are my constituents telling me

Statements
on my Facebook feed from my constituents include:

“If he (Jeremy) gets elected as leader of the Labour Party I
will come back from the Greens the only other party that leans to the left and
in support of the people.”

“I believe it needs to change people’s
minds and lead rather than take the populist view. That's what it was good at
back when it started. Make fairness, caring and looking after the worker and
the disadvantaged an electable ticket rather than trying to be a less
conservative Tory party”

“I feel the Labour Party has forgotten its
roots and those who started it. It was from trade unionists we came!! For a
Labour Party to abstain from voting on welfare rights is completely
diabolical.”

Finally, we win when we offer the electorate
hope, when we appear economically competent, when we appear a party of
principle - and that is why I am
supporting Jeremy Corbyn for leader.